Prescriptive Precedence of Criticism of Document or Text

Injuryof Hadith, in different ways, is a distinct and well-known phenomenon of Muslim's Hadith legacy. Since, such an injury is directed at the document of Hadith or its text, the Muslim scholars paid attention to the criticism of document or text in order to accept or reject the Hadith. So, they have invented many methods and rules. Apart from which criticism had been taken historically precedence over the other or considered as a criterion, this important question raises that which one of both methods is authentic and that which one is prescribed to accept or reject a Hadith as a principal method, so that there is no need to criticize the other method? Does each of both methods serve individually for a specific Hadith? Or both of them should be applied for criticizing any kind of Hadith? Eventually, to what extent the results of these two criticisms do approve the Hadith expressed or issued by an Imam truly?In this paper written by gathering data through library study and the data criticized and analyzed through descriptive-analytical method, it is attempted to answer to the above- mentioned question and finally it becomes clear that it is necessary to use both of the critical methods to prove the accuracy of the Hadiths in general, except in the particular cases, depending on the kind of the text, one of the two methods is used. It is while that proving the accuracy of document or text does not require proving accuracy of its issuance.